The Jungle Giants on Their First Asian Tour: We Chat with Lead Singer Sam Hales

PUBLISHED April 20th, 2015 02:42 am | UPDATED June 10th, 2020 08:56 pm

Indie-pop four-piece band The Jungle Giants are currently surfing radio waves like veteran pros in the Land of Oz. Born and bred in Brisbane, the quartet are a breath of fresh air with their catchy, rock-infused college rhythms. And after 4 years of solid, hard work, the young Aussies are embarking on their first ever Asian Tour, with pit stops in Jakarta, Kualur Lumpur, Manila, and finally, Singapore. We spoke to with lead singer, Sam Hales, before their upcoming gig in Singapore where topics ran the gamut of band battles to the spirituality of the Amazon, and even Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s bathroom habits.

Hey Sam! How are you feeling for your first ever Asian Tour?

We had a couple of friends who did a tour of Asia, and they told us that it was a really, really good tour. It’ll be kinda strange going to a country that you’ve never even been to before, meeting lots of new people, but I’m really excited.

Tell us a little more about yourselves. I understand that you and the rest of your band mates have been friends for a very long time, were there any epic stories involving the four of you?

From Left: Andrew Dooris, Sam Hales, Keelan Bijker, Cesira Aitken – The Jungle Giants

We used to play in bands together, I’m not sure if you’ve read that but we used to compete in ‘Battle Of The Bands’. Me and Cesira were in one band, and Andrew and Keelan were in another band, and usually we’d have like a ‘Battle Of The Bands’ once every six months or something. My band was called ‘Central Hero’, where Cesira was playing lead guitar and I was playing the drums. The other guys were called ‘Fake Tan’ – Andrew was the lead singer and Keelan was on the drums. They were pretty good, ’cause ‘Fake Tan’ always beat us.

So how did you guys actually win this little competition?

You have to cover a song and I guess it was just crowd response.

Did y’all play in your garages or something?

Oh, it was at school. We would come up at assembly and play in front of the whole school. (Laughs)

Do you remember the moment one of your songs first played on the radio?

Sam at Colab Festival 2014

It was really cool. I think we had our song ‘Mr Polite’ on triple j Unearthed, and someone told me it was out onto rotation and so I remember listening to the radio all night. I was pretty sure at one point it came on, and I was driving in my car. It was like some moment out of a movie, I was just like driving around, like driving really fast, and I had my hand out of the window, and I was calling all of my friends at the same time.

I gotta ask, have you guys been to an actual jungle before? Since you guys are The Jungle Giants.

(Laughs) There is actually like no meaning behind the name. I think when we were coming up with band names, it was kinda rushed. Because we’d just finished our first EP, and we hadn’t actually finished coming up with a name yet, so the EP was mixed and we brought it into mastering, which is where they print the music onto a CD. And the guy sitting on the chair was like: “What’s your band name, so I can put it on?’, and I had no idea. Eventually, I called Andrew and I said: “Hey, I think we’re called ‘The Jungle Giants’, and he was like: “Yeah, that’s fine.” And that’s just kind of how it happened. There was no real idea behind the name, I think I came up with it on the bus once.

So would you go to a real jungle like the Amazon, just to sit down and play music for fun?

Sam and Keelan at triple j’s One Night Stand

Yeah maybe! My brother actually just went to the Amazon recently – he did a spiritual retreat with some shamans there, and that sounded really cool. I really wanna go to Mexico next year and see if I can find some jungle down there.

So what exactly did your brother do?

It’s called Ayahuasca, which is kind of like spiritual medicine, and he went for 12 days. You start the retreat by bathing in this holy river, and subsequently, you kind of go into this hut and do all the ceremonies. He came back like totally, totally different. He came back really chilled out. He used to have a lot of anxiety, and that’s kind of why he wanted to go, to see if he could like, get rid of it…and he did!

I’ve did a little reading and the process seems torturous.

Yeah, the spiritual purge is. On the first night you drink the Ayahuasca and it’s the hardest because that’s when you’re supposed to spiritually die and reborn. So the reason why it’s torturous it’s because he had to re-experience his most horrible, worst memories, and he had to purge them, like vomit it out. He said each time he vomited, it was purple, and in the purple liquid he could ‘see’ the memories falling out of him. (Laughs) It’s intense! But he loved it.

Let’s talk about your music. Are there any bands in particular that inspire you guys?

Sam and Andrew rocking it out

Yeah totally, it changes every time. Like the first couple of EP’s I was really into Cloud Control in Sydney. I love that band, and also, Two Door Cinema Club were a really big influence in the start, and over time, it’s really built and changed. I really like LCD Soundsystem now and they’ve been a big influence in the past.

Where do you see your music direction taking you in the future?

In all kinds of places. I got really, really into Beck for awhile a couple of years ago, and I liked how his records have a bunch of different styles in one. He’s not pigeonholed. If someone ever asked me: “What genre is Beck?”, I’d say: “You just have to listen to him I guess, he’s everything”. And I kinda like writing different genres, I love indie-pop, and I love writing it. I just thought with this next record that we’re just about to release, it kinda spans over a couple different genres, couple of different sounds, so I think it’s like the first time where we think we’ve made a real record, the kind that starts somewhere and ends in another place instead of having just 10 or 12 songs on a record. It kinda feels like a full story I guess.

Could you perhaps share with us some of the genres that you’re hinting at?

Cesira taking a chill pill

Some songs have a really indie-rock vibe, which is kinda coming from the first record. But we’ve got a few more colours, it’s a little darker in some places, a little more distortion, a little more rock. And we have other songs that have a 60’s, 70’s flavour. There’s a couple of songs at the end of the album that get a little weird, some that have like hip-hop beats, backbeats with a kind of melodic sound. We also have one song that kinda sounds like a little Mexican guitar ditty.

How’s the music scene in Brisbane like?

Lately, it’s good! Just in Brisbane we’ve had a couple of new venues that opened up. There’s one called The Triffid, and every band in Brisbane is playing there at the moment. They’ve turned an old aircraft hangar into a venue, and it can fit 600 people. It’s supposed to be really good, and I guess the scene is going really well. I live with a band called Moses Gun Collective, and they’ve never really done that much before, and just in the last year they made a record and released music, so it’s gone really well, like they’re starting to play festivals and stuff. So yeah, I guess the scene just got a little bigger.

Do you think Prime Minister Tony Abbott would make a good bathroom singer?

(Laughs) A good bathroom singer? I don’t think so man, I don’t think he’d be very much good at anything in the bathroom. (Both laugh). I’m sure he’s not much of the creative type. Did you see that video of him eating an onion?

No, what video?

It’s really strange, our Prime Minister was doing a speech at a farm, and there was a farmer saying he grows really good onions, and so on live TV, our Prime Minister just bit into this onion like an apple, and it kinda went viral. Everyone was like: “Why did he do that?” So I guess if he was singing in the shower he would just smell like onions.

That’s a funny sight, him eating onions while showering at the same time!

I imagine he’s like Shrek in the bathroom.

The Jungle Giants will be performing live on Sunday, 26 April from 6pm onwards at TAB. Check out their Facebook Page here. 

Price: $45. To purchase tickets, please click here.